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Jet Makers Avoid Risk by Redoing Old Models

After a decade of pushing hard on the edge of technology, Boeing and Airbus are turning more cautious in building new jetliners.

Boeing’s announcement last week that it had begun pitching airlines on an enhanced version of its 777 jet, rather than a whole new plane, underscores how the aerospace industry is pulling back from the risky bets that have led to costly, and humbling, delays on other planes, like Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

Instead of following the Dreamliner template, in which it sought to create a revolutionary plane brimming with new technology, Boeing is now seeking a safer, more incremental path. It plans to add the most crucial new technologies, like lightweight plastic composite wings and more fuel-efficient engines, to the 777, while avoiding the time and expense of designing a replacement from scratch.

Airbus, too, has expressed concern about the “go for broke” mentality that prompted Boeing to fill the Dreamliner with novel features, including a greater use of composites and a more advanced electrical system to increase the fuel savings.

After smoke and fire erupted from the new lithium-ion batteries on two 787s in January, forcing the grounding of the entire fleet, Airbus dropped its plans to use the volatile batteries on its new A350 jets and went back to more tried-and-true ones.

“Risk, risk, risk,” Tom Enders, the chief of Airbus’s parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space, said of Boeing’s approach to the Dreamliner.

Mr. Enders said Airbus had made similar mistakes in designing some of the components on its latest planes. “It’s pushing the technology envelope and not always taking enough care that the technologies were mature when we put them on an aircraft,” he said. “And that doesn’t benefit the customer, obviously.”

Aviation analysts said Boeing had to make a technological leap with the Dreamliner over the last decade to again surpass Airbus in total plane sales, just as it now has to upgrade the 777, its long-range workhorse, to counter a new challenge from the A350.

But while Boeing needed to take radical steps, like molding the entire fuselage of the Dreamliner out of the plastic composites to cut fuel costs by 20 percent, it can achieve similar fuel savings on the 777 by using advanced engines and adding huge composite wings to a metal frame.

The prospect of gaining such savings with a more cautious approach delights both the airlines and Boeing’s investors, who would love to see it complete the development process without the kind of white-knuckle ride — or the extra billions in cash — that the Dreamliner required.

W. James McNerney Jr., Boeing’s chief executive, said recently that “we all remember the times of fighting through the 787 development where the technologies weren’t quite as mature as we hoped they’d be.” He said the company’s strategy in updating the larger 777, and creating two additional versions of the 787, was to “harvest some hard-fought gains” in that technology without taking such big risks.

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Mr. McNerney said the new version of the 777, which is still subject to final approval by Boeing’s board, would include much more substantial improvements than most planes derived from existing ones and could be ready by the end of the decade. “So I think we may be in an era where we can absorb somewhat less risk and still deliver a lot of performance,” he added.

The company’s plans for the updated 777, known as the 777X, are also significant because it could be the last new model that Boeing builds before the 2030s. And the updating is not risk-free: advances in engine technology can prove difficult, and the composite wings on the new 777 will be wider and more complicated to fabricate than those on the 787.

Boeing’s efforts to seek advance orders for the plane will also set off an intense new phase in its rivalry with Airbus, one determined more by how efficiently each company can produce the planes than their visions.

“Airbus squandered a decade on the A380,” a gigantic jet that has had disappointing sales, said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. Boeing, he added, lost the advantage with its troubles on the 787. With the A350, which also has a composite body and wings, he said, “what’s important is that Airbus is catching up.”

The first sign of the industry’s shift toward more incremental change came in late 2010, when Airbus decided to put new fuel-saving engines on its smaller A320 jets. Boeing, which had considered building an all-new 737, followed suit in 2011 with plans to add new engines to its planes.

Analysts said that since those planes fly the shorter routes, it would not have been worth the cost to substantially remake them with composite materials. Boeing’s concepts for the more extensive 777 makeover began to leak out last summer, and Mr. Aboulafia and other analysts have criticized the company for taking so long to move forward with it.

But Boeing also faces conflicting pressure from Wall Street to get past the huge expenditures on the Dreamliner and generate more cash, and its stock has rallied in recent weeks at the prospect that it could be putting the battery and other problems behind it.

Given the financial pressure, Mr. Aboulafia said, Boeing’s board had been reluctant to start marketing another new plane. “There was also no way,” said Scott Hamilton, an aviation consultant at the Leeham Company in Issaquah, Wash., “to do an all-new 777 in this decade.”

In its efforts to leverage its investments in the Dreamliner, Boeing is also building a stretched version, called the 787-9, and talking to airlines about an even longer version, the 787-10. Airbus is also building three versions of the A350 to compete directly with the Dreamliners and the 777. The largest A350 would normally seat up to 350 people, while Boeing’s 777X might carry 400 in the main version and 350 in a later configuration that could travel even longer distances.

All these planes, with expected flight ranges from 7,000 to more than 9,000 nautical miles, will have only two engines and should fit into a sweet spot in the market, given the growing demand from Middle Eastern and Asian airlines for long-haul planes. But with 400 seats and one of the longest ranges, Mr. Aboulafia said, the main 777X “could be in a class by itself if Boeing can launch it on time and get it right.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 6, 2013, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Jet Makers Avoid Risk By Redoing Old Models. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe